


Don't Bury the Living

by Deannie



Series: One Day at Red Cliff [3]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-25
Updated: 2014-07-25
Packaged: 2018-02-10 02:54:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2008275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“So what? We just write ‘em off?!” I yell. Chris just shakes his head and his eyes are like back when Sarah died. Hell, no, Larabee, just… Hell, no.</p><p> </p><p>  <i>Written for the hc_bingo 2014 prompt: abandonment issues</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Bury the Living

**Author's Note:**

> This is the second story in Trifecta Bingo #1, which fulfills the "tune-in" achievement (all interconnected), the "Steadfast" achievement (all in the same fandom), and the "Serial Pleasures!" achievement (all TV fandom). Whew!
> 
> Thanks to Fara for the betas on this series. You've welcomed me into the fandom with open arms, and I appreciate it!

It’s a long, long moment of noise and hell before I can think straight long enough to dig myself out of the red rocks that’ve half buried me. If he ain’t dead already, I’m going to kill Ambrose Goff!

I look up at the cliff face and lose my starch. Jesus… half of it is just gone….

No. No, not gone. Scattered across the valley floor, covering almost everything and everyone. I can barely believe I’m standing. Hell, I’m barely even hurt….

I turn around to the thin stand of trees McAuliffe was using as cover, not surprised to see them empty. I’m betting Goff took off the second McAuliffe’s shot started the cliff face sliding. I don’t see Nathan over there, either—or a body—and now I’ve got an ugly feeling in my gut. He wouldn’t have gone after them without checking on us first.

Damn.

I turn back around and look at where JD was crouching when I last saw him. There’s a mound of rock and wagon wheels and nothing else.

Chris and Vin were nearer the cliff face, and I cringe at the solid mass of boulders six feet tall.

Josiah was near the spring, but the spring is gone now…

I take a deep breath, rub a hand over my face to find I’m bleeding from a few cuts that suddenly sting like the dickens, and try to figure out where to dig first.

Who’s most likely to need help the quickest…?

What the hell am I supposed to do here?

It’s like when I was thirteen and there was that rockslide at the mine outside of town. I remember looking up at the hillside and seeing the whole damn length of it just crumble down on itself.

Twenty men died—and every one of them left relatives behind to mourn him.

I ain’t telling Maude her son died chasing after that racist son of a bitch.

I ain’t writing Celia and telling her she’s the only Larabee left.

Hell, I don’t even know if Josiah’s sister would understand me if I told her, but I ain’t telling her he’s dead, either.

As for Vin and JD, well, we’re all they got, and I ain’t burying them, that’s for damn sure.

My ears are ringing, but I still hear a God awful screech of fear near where the spring used to be. Cuts off quick, but I’m already running.

“JOSIAH!”

Damn—can’t see a thing in all this dust. As I get closer, though, I see that the spring isn’t gone at all. It’s bigger, if anything. The landslide opened a wider channel for it and it’s rushing down to the new valley floor. I see a flash of serape in the foam and curse a blue streak as I realize Josiah’s right under the torrent of it, serape soaking wet and over his head.

Pulling his huge deadweight out of three feet of silt and water is easy—it’s ripping that cloth off his face and checking if he’s breathing that’s hard. Hearing nothing but the rapid pat of his heart when I touch my ear to his chest makes me rear back and hit him sharp across the face. It takes two more smacks before he sucks in a too-deep breath and sits up hard, bellowing in pain. Or terror.

Lord, I never want to hear that sound again.

“You’re okay, Josiah,” I tell him quiet, keeping hold on his shoulder with one hand and rubbing the other one up and down his back. “You’re all right. Rest a minute now. Catch your breath.”

“Thought I’d never have that luxury again.” His words are cut up by harsh pants for air and his face is a mass of bruising with fear stark in his eyes. Typical, though, he’s worried about the others first. “JD and Ezra?”

I shake my head and let the fear just sit there in my gut. Ain’t nothing I can do to make that better ‘til we find them so there’s no use worrying about it. “Don’t know about Chris and Vin, neither.”

“I saw Vin go down,” he says, pushing against me to try to lurch to his feet. Seems determined to do it, so I let him, half holding him up as he shakes. “Don’t know how bad.” He looks up finally and sees what I’ve been staring at since the shaking stopped. Devastation near total, all around us. “Dear Lord….”

“Don’t think the Lord had much to do with this, Preacher,” I tell him.

He’s silent a minute, and the dust keeps sifting down the cliff beside us. “Nathan?” he finally asks.

I ignore the tight knot that question pokes at. “Reckon he’d be helping dig us all out if he was here. Either he’s following Goff or...”

Josiah nods, worry crowding out some of the cold fear still in his eyes. “He wouldn’t’ve left us willingly.” I watch him pull himself together and wish I could do the same. Feel like I’m about to fly apart at the seams. “God helps those who help themselves, Buck,” he tells me with a smile he don’t feel. “Let’s take a look around.”

He tries to take a step and nearly brings us both to the ground. He’s still shaking something fierce, though it don’t look like there’s too much wrong with him.

Except nearly drowning in a waterfall while buried alive.

Shit.

I pat him on the shoulder as he sits on the rocky ground. “Take a rest. Get your legs back under you.” I stand and turn back to the boulder field. Hell. Who do I look for first? JD and Ezra or Chris and Vin? Little brother or—

“Give me a minute and I’ll go for Chris and Vin,” Josiah assures me, like he can read my mind. “Ezra and JD were moving toward the rocks behind their wagon last I saw them, so there’s a chance they hit shelter before the blast.” He grins tiredly. “God watches over fools and children…”

“Sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which,” I throw back to him gratefully. I’ll find ‘em.

I ain’t burying no more family.

 

The sun’s headed for the horizon and I haven’t seen a sign of JD and Ezra. Josiah’s been working like a madman, but he’s come up empty, too. Hell, I don’t even know if we’re looking in the right places. Landscape has changed totally now and the cliff that used to be the prettiest thing for miles around is ugly and beaten all to hell.

I found a couple of lanterns—glasses are cracked but not broken and they got oil in ‘em—be real useful once darkness falls. We need to think about eating something soon. Haven’t stopped working since we split up.

“BUCK!? NATHAN! JOSIAH? YOU OUT THERE!?”

The bellow of mixed anger and worry that can only be Chris lets me take the first deep breath I’ve tried for since this morning.

“We’re here, Chris!” Josiah assures him, stopping his work and heading to the edge of a wall of dirt and sand nearby. Old man was close—wasn’t digging but six feet away from them and never would have found them…

Wonder if I’ve been digging that close to JD.

“Vin there?” Josiah calls as I run up. I can see a hand sticking out of the wall, trying to dig a bigger hole. Josiah and I get to work with our own blistered and bleeding paws and the work goes faster.

“Rifle shot to the shoulder,” Chris says in that no nonsense way he has when he knows a wound ain’t fatal. “Bound it up good, but the bullet’s still in there. Ain’t got light to dig it out.”

His face is pale in the growing twilight and he looks fair beat up, but breathing and taking care of business. I hear Vin’s voice behind him in the dark—not the words, but the ornery cussedness of it—and grin. Things are looking up.

“Think you two can climb out of there,” I ask, “or do we need to come in and carry you out?”

Chris grumbles a curse at me and claws his way up into the light. Vin bats at his helping hand with an “I got it myself, Larabee. God damn.” that warms us all. He’ll be just fine.

“I’ll work on a fire,” Josiah says, taking Vin’s good arm over his shoulder and heading for the trees where I last saw Nathan. I try to help Chris, who shakes me off and looks around bleakly.

“Nathan?” he asks, like he already knows the answer. “Vin said he was right up by Goff and McAuliffe.”

I nod. “We reckon Goff took him with him.” I steel myself, waiting for him to ask why I haven’t found JD and Ezra yet.

But he just straightens his shoulders and stumbles toward the tree where Josiah is laying Vin down. “We’ll go after him as soon as we get Vin cleaned up.”

I stop and it takes him a minute to notice I’ve done it. He looks back at me with a question in his eyes.

“What about JD and Ezra?” I ask finally, pissed that I have to. “You just gonna leave them under all of that?”

He looks at the field of rocks and there’s a dark certainty in his eyes that gets my belly burning. “Buck… I’m sorry. You know they weren’t more than ten yards from that wagon when the dynamite blew—“

“So what? We just write ‘em off?!” I yell. Josiah looks up from where he’s talking to Vin. I can’t see his eyes from here, but I know he agrees with me that there’s a chance. There’s always a chance, no matter how long the odds, right?

Chris shakes his head and his eyes are like back when Sarah died. Hell, no, Larabee, just… Hell, no.

“I ain’t leaving them here, Chris,” I say simply.

He nods like he’s humoring me. “Josiah and I’ll leave as soon as the bullet’s out,” he agrees. Then he turns his back on me.

And that’s just what it feels like, too. Like he’s turning his back on me and on JD and Ezra. Just giving them up for dead.

Well, damned if _I’m_ going to! I leave the doctoring to Josiah and the doom to Chris and I get back to my digging.

 

“Buck!”

I look up and see Josiah heading toward me. I been ignoring the sounds from around the fire and trying to get my temper under control while I keep digging, but I know they need to go after Nathan now, and I know I’m not going to do JD any good if I don’t eat soon.

“We’re heading out,” he says simply. There’s no sad sympathy in his voice, which heartens me. He’s not looking to bury JD and Ezra, either. “Vin’s as comfortable as he’s going to get. Pony just showed up.”

I nod. Finding the horses is going to be a nightmare. The cliff face is still unstable and bits of it have been crashing down every once in a while—that’d scare the crap out of any horse and send her bolting. If she wasn’t caught in the slide… I can’t think about that right now, though. I can’t. “Prophet?”

Josiah grins. “Damn fool horse never moved from where I’d ground tied him. Lucky for him the slide didn’t get that far.”

“Thank God for dumb horses,” I mutter, glaring across to the fire, where Chris is checking his saddlebags and tending to Pony. “ _And_ them that are smarter than their people.”

Josiah follows my gaze and drops a hand on my shoulder. He’s going to get all philosophical, I can feel it.

“There was a miner once,” he starts. “Was off prospecting and came back to find a sinkhole had taken all he had—house, dog, horse. All of it. He stood there at the edge of the depression for a long time, pondering. Then he took up a shovel and finished filling it in. A friend came by as he was working and asked him, ‘Why are you burying it all deeper? Why don’t you dig it up? Maybe _something_ survived.’ And do you know what he said?”

I don’t have the energy for Josiah’s stories today. I can barely think beyond the next pile of rock, for God’s sake. “No idea, Preacher. I expect you’ll tell me, though.”

“He said, ‘I reckon, if I smooth the ground over, maybe I’ll forget where it is, and it won’t hurt so much not to know.’”

And ain’t that just Chris in a nutshell. Bury it all under hard hate and coldness and ignore the pain. Maybe it won’t hurt so bad this time…

“Find ‘em, Buck,” Josiah tells me. “Don’t worry what Chris thinks. His fear is his own. Just know JD and Ezra are here somewhere and waiting for you.”

I clap him on the shoulder in gratitude. “Go find Nathan. I reckon we’ll be needing him.”

“I fear you’re right, brother.” He starts to steer me toward the campfire and I let him. “I had some herbs for pain and a few bandages in my saddlebags. And there’s stew on, such as it is.”

“Ain’t much.”

I grin at Vin’s grumble as we enter the circle of light cast by the fire. “Better than not eating, Tanner,” I throw back.

“Be better with some whiskey, ‘stead of that horse piss,” he says, gesturing to the empty tin cup next to him. There’s lines of pain on his face that aren’t likely to soon be erased, even with the tea, but he’s also clearly exhausted. Don’t figure he’ll be awake much longer. Afraid I might not be either, if I stop moving for too long.

Chris is checking Pony over and I stiffen as he looks over at me. That eases when I don’t see any pity this time. I do see fear, though, and I remember Josiah’s crazy story.

“Best hide this from Vin,” he tells me, walking up and handing me a half-empty bottle of rotgut he must have found in his bags. He settles his guns on his hips. “He’d rather get drunk than drink that tea of Nathan’s and you’ll need this to keep the wound clean ‘til we get back.”

JD and Ezra might need it, too, I think but don’t say as he heads over for a few last words with Vin. It’s like he’s already built the crosses and all that’s left is to pin ‘em to the ground.

“Vin figures Goff’ll head down Perdido,” Josiah tells me. “We won’t make the first likely campsite ‘til dawn.”

I nod and shake his hand. “Hope to have everyone sleeping by the fire by then, Preacher.”

He grins and turns to mount Prophet, looking back at me from the height. “May God guide your hands, my friend.”

Chris mounts beside him and nods to me more grimly, and they’re gone.

And I try not to feel totally alone without them.

“Reckon if they’re still alive, they’ll be behind those rocks to the east of the wagon.”

Hell, I almost forgot Vin was there. He’s staring at me from his seat against the tree, the same dread certainty in his eyes as in Chris’s.

Guess I _am_ alone, after all.

“They’re alive,” I grate, reaching for a plate and spooning some of Josiah’s slop onto it. Least I _hope_ it’s Josiah’s.

Vin nods and closes his eyes and I want to argue with him, too, but Lord, there’s no point. I ain’t given up on Chris in all these years. No reason to give up on JD.

I eat as quick as I can, grab one of the lanterns, and steel myself to get back to it.

“Tap on the rocks,” Vin murmurs. I thought he’d already drifted off. “Find a hollow place and dig for ‘em. You’ll find ‘em.”

I nod to him, though his eyes are closed. I _will_ find them. And they’ll be alive.

 

I love being right!

I’m shaking with exhaustion by the time I get Ezra laid out face-down on the blanket I scrounged, but they’re both out, both alive…

I’m almost dizzy with the joy of it.

“Damn!” Vin mutters, moving from where JD lays sleeping to Ezra. “Looks like a bad-chopped steak.”

I can only nod. Ezra’s a mess. I don’t want to know what that’s going to look like in the daylight, but by lantern, his back looks like it’s half wagon wood.

“Must’ve put himself between JD and the blast,” Vin says quietly. “JD ain’t got a bit of wood in him.”

I’ll have to buy Ezra one of those expensive scotches of his when we get home. My head is ringing as I walk back over to JD and take a look at his arm. I’ll need something to splint it.

“Damn lucky to get out of there alive,” Vin says. I turn on him.

“Guess maybe you all shouldn’t’ve given up on them so easy, huh?”

He ducks his head a little, but doesn’t reply—just uses some of the water we got boiling and the last of the bandages to clean up what he can on Ezra’s head and neck. I figure his back’s best left to Nathan.

I take a deep breath and let it out. Ain’t no reason to get mad at either of them, I guess. Suppose it’s just easier for some to give up hope than others. I look down at the kid lying quiet and breathing and alive on the ground beside me and just thank God he’s still around.

Lord, when I heard that holler of Ezra’s, all I could do was think I was too late. Then I saw that glow from the cracks in the rocks—just a few seconds, but long enough for me to find the right place—and JD was yelling for me and Ezra was breathing and…

Splinting his arm ain’t much work—break feels like a simple one, I hope—but I can barely move by the end of it.

“Best get some sleep, Buck,” Vin tells me quietly. He’s tending to Ezra still, who looks like, God help him, he might wake soon. I wish JD would.

“I’ll keep watch ‘til JD wakes up,” I tell him.

He snorts in response. “It’ll be dawn afore that happens,” he says confidently. “Got a fair-sized knot there on the side of his head, behind the left ear.”

I feel for it and curse. Why the hell didn’t I think to look for that when he passed out after I found him?

“Sleep, Buck.” Vin’s suddenly right in front of me. “You done a lot today. Need to get your strength up for if Goff slips away from Chris and Josiah.”

“And Nathan,” I remind him. Why are they all so quick to bury the others? I want to be all up in arms again, but God, I am so tired. “He’s alive.”

Vin snorts again. “You were right about these two. Reckon you’re right about him, too.” He turns from me and settles back next to Ezra. “I’m up now. I’ll keep watch.” His grin flashes white in the darkness. “Maybe find that whiskey I know Chris give you.”

I settle down on the ground beside JD, not really caring about—hell, barely even feeling—the rocks and stones under me. I might be lucky to be able to move in the morning. Might need that whiskey myself.

“You find it, you save some for me.”

I stare up into the sky and see that, at some point while I was digging those two out, the moon rose, half full, but bright in a clear black sky.

An awful beautiful night for such a hellish day.

I turn my head and watch JD just breathe.

Maybe not so hellish after all….

* * * * * *  
The End


End file.
